Posted 4 years ago on Feb. 17, 2013, 8:16 a.m. EST by OTP
(-203)
from Tampa, FL
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

WASHINTON (CNN) --
Drones used to be for wars far from the United States, but they're popping up closer to home.

The Federal Aviation Administration forecasts some 10,000 civilian drones will be in use in the U.S. within five years, possibly used by police to fight crime and by oil companies to keep an eye on pipelines.
Friday's announcement from the FAA seeking proposals from cities, states and universities to create six test sites for unmanned aircraft systems is a step in that direction.

The sites will help officials develop safety standards that will allow the government to fully integrate drones into national airspace by 2015.
The drone industry says they make good economic sense.

In the next 3 years, after the FAA has figured out integration, we could see 70.000 jobs created in this new industry.

The Coast Guard uses drones for surveillance on ice sheets in Alaska and local authorities in North Dakota once used a border patrol drone during a dispute over cattle.

Drone makers predict they’ll eventually be used by energy companies to monitor pipelines and by farmers to monitor crops.

New uses will require new government rules to protect privacy.

“We don't want drones to become eyes in the sky constantly spying on us. We need controls so that drones are only used when we believe a crime is happening or we're trying to do something particular like fight a forest fire or find a missing child. If we put those controls in place we'll have a powerful technology that has appropriate controls,” said Ben Gielow, with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

In Seattle earlier this month, the mayor ended a police department drone program over privacy concerns.

The Virginia legislature is at work on bills that would temporarily ban drones there.

The FAA is asking for public input on its proposed privacy requirements for these test sites.

This week, two House members, a Republican and a Democrat, introduced a bill that would require law enforcement to get a search warrant before using drones to investigate crimes.

9 Comments

The introduction of war technology into the private market is the history of innovation. From the microwave to nuclear power plants, most innovation was created for war.

I have to agree with the two house members and say that government should have to have warrants. Furthermore, private individuals should, at a bare minimal, have to conform to privacy laws written to protect people from being illegally recorded. You can use the drone to spy on your own property, but if your state requires you to get a person's consent to record a conversation, then that precedent should carry over to this technology.

Warrants are a good idea but they can easily be rendered meaningless. There was the FISA court approval required by PATRIOT Act for conducting domestic eavesdropping but it just became a formality and eventually done away with by the Bush'ite administration. Our FISA court approved tens of thousands of domestic eavesdropping while blocking only a handful. To the credit of the NSA, one of its employees made an effort to make the FISA court review slightly more meaningful and within the Constitution but even that would have amounted nothing more than just interfering with the analogous robo-signing of foreclosure actions committed by the mortgage lenders.

Without conscientious and constitutionally minded people in government, all of the warrants, constitutional rights, etc. will mean absolutely nothing in reality.

The FAA mentioned that its existing rules will ensure that drones in the airspace of the U.S. will not carry weapons. Isn't anything that can fly and fall down be a weapon by itself? The 9/11/2001 attacks on the U.S. did not have airplanes that dropped any bombs. The airplanes themselves amounted to much worse than bombs. "The medium is the message." Drones will work in the same way.

How predictable- making the arguments for pipelines and farms, pulling at the heart strings.

The only farmers that are going to be using drones are Monsanto, to make sure no one is fucking with their stuff.

And Im sure the occasional pipeline leak is cause to start putting the government eye in the sky in remote controlled bugs. Wtf. The only thing these drones will be used for is monitoring protesters of the Keystone the next 5 years.

This is insanity.

"“We don't want drones to become eyes in the sky constantly spying on us. We need controls so that drones are only used when we believe a crime is happening or we're trying to do something particular like fight a forest fire or find a missing child. If we put those controls in place we'll have a powerful technology that has appropriate controls,”

Apparently this dumb fuck doesnt realize how this government, and most governments, operate. Hopefully they dont fly over his house and give him a good dose of "democracy".

What in the fuck is wrong with people? Is it literally the water? I mean, the news puts a headline out like that (the one I posted) and no one even flinches? Have they dumbed us down to the point of pods? Are we nothing more than pods?

Technology is neither good or bad. If we had a gov't I trusted I would be ok using drones for things like search and rescue. As it is I believe the current gov't wouldn't stop there and that is what scares me, not the technology itself.